


in sickness and in drought

by 1derspark



Series: celestial colors [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: A child being nosey as hell, Ficlet, Fluff, M/M, Malta, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 01:08:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1derspark/pseuds/1derspark
Summary: Nicky came to visit them every week for his oranges, just like every other customer with a schedule for the market. Hala’s mother liked him, he was polite, and paid promptly, often staying to chat for a few minutes about new recipes he was making. He seemed fond of desserts, or his husband was, whom they had yet to see in person.Hala followed after him once a few weeks ago, after he’d left his coin pouch sitting on the market counter and her mother had told her to return it to him before he disappeared.Nicky was grateful to take it and gave her a spare copper coin for her trouble, but that was after she’d found him in an alleyway with a cat.Light had been shining from his fingertips and reflecting on the wall for the cat to bat at.He’d left soon after, and Hala returned to the stall trying to figure out if the man who bought their oranges was some kind of witch.(Or the curious daughter of a fruit farmer starts an investigation into Nicky's behavior.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova & OFM
Series: celestial colors [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2212356
Comments: 14
Kudos: 107





	in sickness and in drought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kellinredd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kellinredd/gifts).



> Andddd we're back. For those of you that are coming across this fic first, this comes after my main fic The Colors of Dawn. I'm not sure how the reading comprehension will go without reading that first, but I very much do suggest you do go back for context. If you've read it already, welcome to Malta! This is not at all what I expected to write, yet here we are.
> 
> So this is kellin's prompt, and she betaed it, so this fic is literally hers. This is all for you my dear, just a small ficlet in the scope of everything you do for me <3

Hala’s morning chores in the house consisted of thus. She was woken up by her older brother, Bilal, who often thumped her on the forehead to bring her out of sleep. Hala did not enjoy waking up at dawn, but he needed her to help feed their chickens now that he took frequent trips with their father on their boat in the harbor. 

He could not do everything himself he would say to her, as she blinked and yawned while the sky blushed pink above them. She was old enough now to take care of his chores. 

“Why are they your chores then?” was her usual response. He’d swipe for her head but Hala was fast, and Bilal didn’t really mean it, she’d giggle as he chased her through the coop-yard in the morning, chicken seed falling between her fingers while they played. 

Afterward, she’d go into the kitchens where her mother would hand her some warm bread made before dawn. If Hala was lucky there would be honey to go with it, worth the lingering grubbiness on her fingers she would retain for the rest of the day.

With her bread scarfed down, her mother would lead Hala out of the house to the small cart in front of the orchard. Their mule was hitched to it, the back laden with crates of oranges and limes and lemons and grapefruit, that the workers had picked from the orchard yesterday. Hala could see the now bare trees behind her.

With Hala settled, and Bilal sprawled out in the cart with a blade of grass poking out between his teeth, their mother would urge the mule along for the ride down the hill into the city where they’d sell their wares. 

The market square for the island of Malta was lively even before it officially opened, flush with scurrying merchants and cooking fires. The smell of flower oil, cured meat, alcohol from the open seated bars all battling for dominance in the air.

Her father has their fruit stall prepared long before his wife and children arrived, greeting them with open-arms and tired eyes but a smile and often a spare orange, one that had fallen from their display now too bruised to sell, for Hala to snack on for lunch.

He’d kiss his wife, hug his daughter, and lead Bilal down to the shipyard where they were to meet the ships coming in to export their crop. 

Her mother said it was time that Bilal learned the trade if he was to take over for her father when he was older. 

When Hala asked what she would be doing when she was Bilal’s age, her mother said she could choose herself. Bilal did well in his numbers, he had a memory for those kinds of things like their father did. 

Hala was more interested in the groves. The carts of fruit piled board to board with oranges bright as suns, limes green like the water in the sea caves. Her favorite days were weekends because then they headed out to the orchards themselves to check on the crop. She could spend days in the tangled roots of the trees, her hands black from the soil, the farm dogs nipping at her heels, jaws snapping for chunks of fruit. 

Hala would like to do that maybe.

But at nine years old she could not yet choose, and instead sat on a wooden stool behind their fruit stall double counting the coins for her mother as the market came alive, and their customers came looking for fruit.

It was about lunchtime when the strange man came by again. Hala, who was usually content to spend her lunch break winding through the other market stalls buying a toy or sweet treat, kept herself planted in her seat as the man came by.

“Good afternoon, Nicky,” her mother said to the strange man, hauling over a small basket of dark blood oranges, their skins a bright burnt orange. 

“Good afternoon, Isra,” Nicky said with an incline of the head. He was paler-skinned than most of the people on the island, but their city was full of all kinds. This was not why he was strange. 

Nicky came to visit them every week for his oranges, just like every other customer with a schedule for the market. Hala’s mother liked him, he was polite, and paid promptly, often staying to chat for a few minutes about new recipes he was making. He seemed fond of desserts, or his husband was, whom they had yet to see in person. 

Hala followed after him once a few weeks ago, after he’d left his coin pouch sitting on the market counter and her mother had told her to return it to him before he disappeared. 

Nicky was grateful to take it and gave her a spare copper coin for her trouble, but that was after she’d found him in an alleyway with a cat. 

Light had been shining from his fingertips and reflecting on the wall for the cat to bat at.

He didn’t seem bothered by her seeing it, maybe if she’d said something, but she was too busy being slack-jawed, the coin pouch extended out from her body in an awkward offering. 

He’d left soon after, and Hala returned to the stall trying to figure out if the man who bought their oranges was some kind of witch. 

Hala had heard of such strange creatures before. On the island, they had their own thoughts on gods and monsters, but Hala’s family thought little of them only in that they hoped the trees were healthy and the rains good and whatever was out there that might help in such things was happy. 

Bilal had a storybook he liked to read some nights to her, one from the mainlands. He’d read it for fun, as Bilal liked reading just as much as he liked doing his numbers, but he’d also read them to scare her sometimes. 

Tucked into his side Bilal would tell her the tales of the sea and earth goddesses, how the mountains shook when they were angry, the seas swallowing ships and spitting them out as wooden skeletons on a deserted beach. 

He told her stories of how the sun and the moon gods warred in the forests, leaving ice and fire in their footsteps when they were angry. How they could walk among us as men, but there would be things about them that were _not._

A flick of the light on a wall, a hand extended that was too warm to the touch, the sound of the sea in your ears when the beach was far away.

Nicky, their buyer of oranges, played light-games with the alleycats on the wall. Hala tried to forget it, but after his next few visits, she would follow him and watch… for whatever he was doing.

Luckily Nicky came by late enough into her lunch hour that her mother didn’t mind Hala wandering off after the man into the thick crowd. He was easy to spot if Hala kept her eye on him, with his long nose and his even longer sword that he kept hanging down at his side. It was of a more foreign design, people on the island preferred shorter one-handed weapons. Hala did not think she could lift it with two.

But if Hala wandered from following the tall brown-haired head of Nicky, tempted instead by the smell of roasted nuts or a pretty turquoise necklace she might like for her birthday, Nicky would be gone. She’d spend what was left of her lunch hour searching for him, only to return to the stall stomping, grumpy, and empty-handed of more evidence. 

Hala strengthened her resolve. She demanded Bilal read her more of his god-books at night, and though he seemed confused by her demands he did not protest.

She settled in beside her brother to absorb as much information as possible. She would catch Nicky tomorrow. 

~

It happened entirely by accident. Hala was lucky she didn’t kill herself, but the tenacity of a nine-year-old could not be forestalled, and especially not Hala’s.

It was approaching summertime on the island, and the weather was picking up in its heat, though it was damp and humid most days. It was hard not to feel like she was covered constantly in water, but that did not stop her mission.

Nicky came by one morning for his fruit, looking rather composed compared to everyone else in the market who was sweating and stained in the heat. There wasn’t a wet spot on him, he was practically glowing, happy as can be.

He conversed with her mother for a while as he usually did, before heading off. Hala followed soon after. 

The other day Hala had found a small stairway to the rooftops on the edge of the baker’s store just opposite their stall in the market. She could see best from up there, and on the hot days, the rooftop caught the best breeze. She eyed this staired entrance-way now with a wide smile, an idea forming.

She made her way up to the rooftops before anyone could see her or scold her and ran to the side when she bent over to look for a mop of brown hair and a pale face in the crowd. She was fast, and lucky because Nicky had not gone far.

He had stopped at the jeweler’s where he held a pendant in his hand, some kind of smooth golden stone with silver metal warped around it in the shape of the sun. He haggled with the jeweler for a moment before handing over a few coins, pocketing the pendant and moving north out of the thickest part of the crowd.

Hala followed him over the rooftops.

It wasn’t _easy_ but it was more efficient than trying to squeeze her way through the squished group of people packed in wall to wall buying and selling their goods. Hala was not very tall and people tended to shove and push her out of the way to get where they were going.

Hala could feel a creeping burn in her lungs as she jumped and darted from rooftop to rooftop, not knowing how long she could keep it up, following Nicky from above, and eventually the rooftops would run out. There would be some gaps she could not breach, and with the direction that Nicky was going, north out of the city to the neighborhood built into the sea cliffs, there would be no more buildings for her soon.

She didn’t have to worry about that problem because her next jump timed perfectly to where Nicky had slipped into an alleyway to cross one of the busier streets. She paid more attention to what Nicky was doing than where her feet were going and she fell.

But she did not hit the ground.

She landed in Nicky’s arms, and he was actually _glowing._

Having caught her or not he looked just as surprised to see her there as she was to not be splattered across the alleyway. And when he realized that she could see his _skin,_ which was, she realized, not just white but a medley of so many light colors coming in sparkles of rainbow that looked like a gemstone in the sunlight, he dropped her clumsily to the ground and backed up to give her space.

“You’re a witch,” was the first thing Hala said to him, dripping with a child-like tone of accusation. 

“Ah, not quite. That is not the word I would use,” Nicky said apologetically. He’d dimmed himself down, looking almost normal again. A few alley cats had come out of hiding and were rubbing themselves along his legs looking for more light. Nicky must frequent this alleyway often to play with them.

“What word would you use then?” 

Nicky hummed, an uncomfortable sound in his throat. He was not used to being asked these questions, which Hala thought was funny. She thought he was pretty obvious in his… otherness.

“I do not like being called a god,” he finally said, “but at home that is what people refer to me as.”

Hala considered this. She believed him. And Bilal’s books confirmed it. Her brother would not read her books full of _lies._ He was smarter than that. And she’d hit him if he did. 

Nicky eyed the end of the alleyway like a salvation. Hala felt a little bad. Nicky was always nice to her, and her mother too. They had to deal with lots of rude customers, so it was always nice to have one who paid in full and spoke in full, welcoming sentences. Hala did not want to scare him away from their stall, her mother would wonder about it, and they would lose money.

Besides, Nicky did sometimes bring them the things he made with their fruit, and she’d dreamt for days about the last orange tart.

“I’m not going to call you that,” she said to him, “but I did see you, with the cats. That was weird.”

Nicky shrugged, sheepish. “They follow me around, and I have no food to offer them. The game seemed like a good alternative.”

“Can you do other things?” 

Nicky nodded. He seemed less tense now he stepped closer to her.

“May I pull out my sword to show you?”

Hala nodded, more than intrigued. He unsheathed his sword, one-handed, but soon gripped it in two. It was as magnificent as she imagined. Clean, smooth, shining steel almost black in the shadows of the alley, but when he held it out in a fighter’s stance it started to glow with his body.

The sword became living light.

Hala jumped on the balls of her feet and clapped her hands at the display. Nicky moved through a few more battle stances at her request before putting the sword back. 

“Thank you, Hala,” Nicky said. “It has been a while since I have shown someone this and they have appreciated it as you do.”

“You’re very good,” Hala said. She knew when to give a compliment, and Nicky might be strange or a god or whatever but he was better than Bilal when he practiced his swordplay, which wasn’t saying much. “Is that all you can do? Put your light in a sword? I thought you might do more.”

Nicky smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “The other things I think we might save for another day. I cannot show you all my tricks. But look at the sky and the weather some days, you might recognize them.”

Nicky bowed for her, chivalrous, and left the cats scurrying after him. Hala returned to the fruit stall satisfied, but curious for more. 

~

It had not rained for three weeks and the island was drying up. The fruit trees could go a week without water, but with the soil bone dry and the sun above them burning and blistering, their livelihood was withering away. Hala spent most of her time in the shade of her room with the dogs panting open-mouthed at her feet.

Bilal was grumpier than usual. It was too hot outside to play with his friends, their mother wanted him still. She would not have her children succumb to heatstroke, and would not have them dragging red dry dirt into the house even more so.

Hala still went to market with her mother most days. They were selling whatever fruit had not shriveled up yet, but their baskets were filling less and less. Most days when they cut open an orange the insides were shriveled and wrinkled, when eaten there was little sweetness. None of that firm plumpness that her father’s oranges were known for.

Nicky came to them on Wednesday like he always did, only he looked different, tired. His eyes looked dim, his face more sickly than his normal lovely paleness. 

Still, he greeted her mother with his usual small smile, if a bit more reserved. “Hello, Isra.”

“Ah, Nicky—” Her mother seemed surprised to see him, her face drawn tight. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect you. I don’t have your oranges today, the harvest has been—well, with the rains gone—”

“They’re all dried up,” Hala interrupted, unable to keep the pout of her face. In her hands was one of the few oranges they’d brought to market. It was smaller than usual, and had lost that ripe, pungent scent. 

She looked up at Nicky, and could not hide the tears in her eyes. She remembered what he said before about the sky and the weather. Was this his fault? Her lower lip trembled. “The rains haven’t come and all the fruit is dried up. Can’t you fix it, Nicky?” 

“Hala!” her mother hissed, before turning back to Nicky. “I’m sorry Nicky, I don’t know what she's talking about. I have some other options for you if you’d like, not as many as usual but—”

“No, no, please,” Nicky said, raising his hand to cut her off. “Save them. I am sorry to hear of your troubles. And about the rain. I would help if I could.” He looked upwards to the sky where the sunburned as it had been for the last few weeks. He wasn’t squinting at it, which Hala thought only _more_ strange. 

“My husband is sick,” Nicky said, apropos of nothing. “We have only been here a couple months but he has not adjusted well to the weather. The oranges cheer him up. They are his favorite fruit. I must thank you Isra, and you too Hala for bringing them to me every week.”

Her mother looked taken back by Nicky’s compliment. “It is of no consequence. I am happy to have a loyal visitor like yourself. I only wish I had something to offer you today.”

Nicky hummed, eyeing the orange in Hala’s hand. She stared at him for a long while, but he would not look away, the tease of a smile at the corner of his lips, his tired face brightened somewhat. 

Hala sighed and thrust the orange out to him. “Take it,” she grumbled. What one of their dry dusty oranges would do for him she didn’t know, but he seemed intrigued by it. It wasn’t like the thing tasted good anyway.

“Thank you, Hala. I think this is a special one,” he said, mysteriously. 

Her mother looked confused by the exchange, but Nicky left before she could question him. They were left alone with the dry heat again. Hala reached for one of the hand-held fans some of the merchants had been using and fanned herself. It didn’t help much.

~

That night Hala woke from her bed to the sound of a thunderclap rolling across the hills. 

She ran out of bed, forgoing even her slippers, and with the dogs behind her as she emerged into the orchard in the dead of night with the moon clouded by heavy, thick clouds. 

Bilal was already out there with her father who was standing at the beginning of the tree rows. 

“Father?” Bilal asked. He was huddled behind him, while their father eyed the sky. 

“The rain is coming,” was all that he said. And the sky rumbled in answer. Hala held out her hand and a raindrop fell on it. Then another. One more. A hundred more. A million. She was drenched to the bone and she could not hear her joyful squealing over the rain. She twirled in the mud with her arms outstretched for as long as her father let her. 

Bilal took her hands and together they danced in the puddles.

~

The next morning it was still raining and it took longer for them to get to town with the streets muddied and atrophied with holes pounded in by the storm. But Isra was no idle woman and she would bring her daughter and son to market every day no matter the weather.

Nicky was waiting outside the stall for them with a man Hala did not recognize.

He was handsome, some of the girls in the neighborhood might giggle over his warm eyes, his kind face, his white teeth. Why they obsessed she could not say, but he was not a bad face to look at.

He was blowing his nose into a handkerchief as they pulled up. And when he greeted her mother by name, his voice sounded congested. 

“You must be Hala,” the man said to her. He handed the handkerchief to Nicky who pocketed it without a word. 

“Are you Nicky’s husband?” she asked.

“I am. My name is Joe,” he said beaming, like just the act of saying it brightened him. He did look rather shiny. Nicky was blushing at his side, their fingers were tangled together now.

“He brought me the orange you gave him yesterday. I have to thank you for it. I’ve been feeling under the weather, and the orange made me feel better.” 

Hala could not resist this man’s warmth. He radiated kindness, even in the shadow of the rain. She could imagine what he would be on a sunny day, though she would not mind forgoing that for a long while.

“He said they were your favorite,” Hala mumbled, scuffing her shoes in the mud. “They’re very good, even when they’re dry.” Which was a lie but Joe didn’t seem to notice or care. 

“I would expect nothing less, your orchards do you credit,” Nicky said to both her and her mother. Isra was smiling at their exchange, seemingly happier with a satisfied customer and a basket full of new, bursting fruit. 

“I’m going to run them when I’m older,” Hala said, puffed up, her back straight and her head high.

Nicky nodded and his face turned mock-serious though his voice remained playful, “And I will be coming for fruit from you then as well Hala. I expect their quality to stand.”

Hala wrinkled her nose. “They’ll be better.”

Joe laughed, loud and boisterous, before breaking off into a cough. Nicky put a hand on his back, rubbing soft circles until he stopped, his face written in concern. 

“It seems I am not healed yet,” Joe said chuckling, his hand over his mouth. He raised his eyes to the sky, where the clouds covered them still, the downpour from last night turned to a drizzle.

“But the worst is behind us, yes?” he said. 

“Yes, I think so.” Nicky wasn’t looking at him, but smiling at her. 

Isra handed Nicky his basket of oranges, happily settled back into the routine. Hala planted herself on her stool as well and set about peeling her lunch open. 

Stuffing slices of oranges into her mouth she watched Nicky and Joe walk back through the market streets, and the occasional burst of white light along the building walls that no one else seemed to see. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come check me out on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/1derspark)! I'm taking prompts at the moment.
> 
> As always comments and kudos are appreciated and feed the beast :)


End file.
